Uh.... No. that's not quite how it works. It's not doubling your hit points. 1 more Mastery on a Blood Specc'd DK is more damage mitigation on a hit, guaranteed. I knew that if I increased my mastery by 1 it would increase my blood shield by a set amount, which would decrease the damage I took from a hit. Guaranteed. no guess work. That's why Armor was such a good stat when you could get pieces with bonus armor. It was always there. It always reduced the damage. It was a constant.

Avoidance is a % chance to not be hit. It could give allow you to miss that swing from the boss, or it could fail you, and you still get hit. You could also get really unlucky and have avoidance fail you, multiple times, in a row. It's unlikely, but it could happen. For me, Avoidance was a "take what you get, but don't gear for it."

It's part of what attracted me to the DK when I quit my paladin. The Dk has/d more control over their survival. i'm unsure how the current active mitigation models are working out for the other classes, so I can't speak to how well they are performing. I can just say that I felt more in control with my DK than I did my paladin.

Sorry, it seems that i didn't make myself clear. Let me try to explain my point of view:What are the issues with a avoidance tank?Even if a avoidance tank in practice takes less damage that a Mitigation tank... there is the issue of spike damage or "randominess" of heal that translates to "X Tank is harder to heal". So if you try to go back to a "avoidance matters" model you still have issues where the tank can get killed thru a unluck string of hits.

What i would propose is to increase the %stamina bonus of tanks so that a tank have a bigger pool to soak unlucky hits... That way you could challenge tanks (reactive CD's could be used jsut to give the healer some breathing room) and challenge healers to be more reactive on the tank but for that you need to make healer's mana important, aka the boss must do enough DPS that a healer HPS/manapool can't handle on the long run if not managed well.

Cheers

An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.

After seeing the data in Cata as Dk's wavered between "Avoidance Vs Mitigation" and Which one is better, I just dont see how Avoidance tanking works as a sustainable model. Even with a higher health pool, it boils down to a "chance" to not take any damage, and taking random spikes, Vs Actively Mitigating the damage that you do take.

Because if you go to the higher health pool, you get back to the problem you had before in PvP, where tanks become the unkillable machine.

Honestly, I would rather tank without avoidance, with higher armor, and mitigation mechanics as opposed to avoidance.

I was talking with a friend last night about this, and then someone on here made a comment, and I realized what I would do. The current tank gearing system just... doesn't work for me. There is no Tanking Leather, which means that two of the Tanking Classes aren't itemizing based on Tanking Stats anyway, while the other tanks are.

Someone said make Plate Parry, and Leather Dodge.

I'd probably go a little further than that. Keep the 5% dodge / Parry that people have currently. Remove Tanking Stats from the game. They've proven that they don't need it to itemize two tanks. Well, that just leaves Plate Tanks tanks.

They already cranked up the Str to Parry Conversion this tier as compensation for some other change that they made. Great. Keep that. Bears (and I'm assuming Drunks) get a fair amount of dodge from Agility. The Plate Tanks would get a fair amount of Parry from Str. They would be locked in at low Parry/Dodge rates anyway, but who cares?

Your base stats give you the avoidance. And then you can reforge to Defensive stats as needed / desired.

It eliminates loot that is designed in the game for 3 talent trees. Plate Tanking gear, and Tanking rings / necklaces and "true" tanking weapons (do they exist in Mop?). You can leave tanking trinkets as is, since they are used by all four of the tanking classes universally. that's a little better.

You can still give "tanking Tier sets" if you want, but by eliminating tank loot from vendors and drop tables, you can streamline gearing, homogenize a little, and eliminate these situations where some stat that isn't intended to be a tanking stat (Haste, or even in the way back times agility for plate) ends up being a mediocre to good tanking stat.

It gives you more room to move and play with the numbers, and come up with more active mitigation. I wont lie, Maybe I feel this way because I like the idea of active mitigation more than what we had when I started playing the game. The evolution from getting "Block Capped" in TBC, to the Active Mitigation model that I used on my Death Knight in Cata was a good process.

They've now brought active mitigation to the masses. Going one step further and removing the tank stats (From itemization only. Like I said, I think leaving them as a reforge is a good idea) that are only used by plate tanks simply streamlines the process.

People have said that Homogenization is bad, and Blizzard has countered with "some Homogenization is good". I would put this in the "Good" category.

I think he's considering the concept already - remember that blog about tank using dps stats back in Cata?But that's a pretty tall order we're talking about here - more something for the next x-pack, like how Defense rating went belly up in the pre-Cata patch, and spellpower tank weapons died in pre-LK.

When that day comes, seek all the light and wonder of this world, and fight.

Ghostcrawler wrote:Is there a reasoning behind this? It honestly feels like you're taking the opinions of a mysterious part of the playerbase (like the same portion who you quoted as "not liking DivPurP because it was too RNG") and changing the entire spec paradigm around it. Why push for MORE class homogenization when the game already has WAY too much?

The game just isn't currently designed to support it. It creates potential problems such as:

A Prot paladin competing with a Frost DK or Ret paladin over gear, meaning there isn't enough DPS plate to go around.

A Prot paladin considering a tier set with dodge and parry on it to be "garbage" because it doesn't stack all haste.

A Prot paladin looking at a Ret 2pc set bonus that she normally wouldn't touch because now the stats aren't that bad either.

In a world where tanking plate didn't exist or every loot system used the personal LFR one or 100% efficient reforging then it might work.

We understand that having a lot of haste feels fun and visceral and is more dependable than dodge and parry. We'll try to come up with a solution that keeps that in mind.

Sorry, I was thinking of what you do if you get rid of tank stat gear all around, not what you do with Paladins in current situation. Getting all mixed up between the "what should happen" and "what do we do right now" conversations.

KysenMurrin wrote:Sorry, I was thinking of what you do if you get rid of tank stat gear all around, not what you do with Paladins in current situation. Getting all mixed up between the "what should happen" and "what do we do right now" conversations.

I thought about a long-term solution on the way from work. Warriors need haste scaling, and we would ALL need crit scaling. Haste wouldn't be though to get for Warrs, as they had that during beta. Crit would be a thougher cookie to crack... Unless out HoPo generators produced 2 HoPo on crits. Same for warriors wirh double rage gen. DK, I'm stumped

When that day comes, seek all the light and wonder of this world, and fight.

Not Paladin related: Something to look for in the next expac is casters losing some (maybe a lot) of their instant cast spells - Blizzard want to get rid of blanket silence effects and make interrupting a bigger deal in PvP, but are no longer going to do it in 5.2 because to work they'd have to get rid of a lot of instants at the same time.

We think the time has come to revert some of the PvP nerfs that we made for noble reasons, but which aren't working out. Specifically, we wanted to remove blanket silences and shift the game back more towards casting and interrupts. We think the continual arms race between instant spells, silences and silence immunity isn't good for the long term health of PvP. It is a shift we still plan to make, but we don't think patch 5.2 is the right time to make it. There are a great deal of instant spells and we don't think it is fair or reasonable to remove them all and force so many players (many of whom might not even participate in PvP) to re-learn their class mid-expansion.

KysenMurrin wrote:Sorry, I was thinking of what you do if you get rid of tank stat gear all around, not what you do with Paladins in current situation. Getting all mixed up between the "what should happen" and "what do we do right now" conversations.

I thought about a long-term solution on the way from work. Warriors need haste scaling, and we would ALL need crit scaling. Haste wouldn't be though to get for Warrs, as they had that during beta. Crit would be a thougher cookie to crack... Unless out HoPo generators produced 2 HoPo on crits. Same for warriors wirh double rage gen. DK, I'm stumped

On crit increases your chance to parry or dodge the next melee atrack against you by 50% via buff 2 sec icd. If you parry or dodge the attack all cooldowns shorter than 10 seconds base are reset.

We live in a society where people born on third base constantly try to steal second, yet we expect people born with two strikes against them to hit a homerun on the first pitch.

saw some of the stats for the lionheart blade. 463 ilvl and it appears BOE...but it looks like it was datamined so that could be wrong.

that being said...not sure how i feel about the BOE part of it...i mean, i'm going to be able to make a whole lot of loot...but at the same time...i don't know. i think i'm going to work on getting my dk up with alchemy...so i can make myself some living steel.

actually, if it's boe...that doesn't really make any sense. people that buy it won't be able to upgrade it unless they make it like enchanting where you put it in the slot and then the blacksmith upgrades your weapon if he can.

Last edited by twinkfist on Fri Jan 25, 2013 12:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Nooska wrote:I like Sags thought about GC unlinked from CS/HotR and linked to avoidance (and have thus tweeted that suggestion specifically to GC).

Hey now, credit where credit's due!

Sagara wrote:I like theck's idea of linking our Avoidance with GC, maybe even remove the interaction with CS/HotR. GC will remain a very random proc, but its link will "reward", or more realisticly "stop punish" Avoidance items.

/flex

Sagara wrote:Getting back to haste, the second half of the coin, I'm still of a mind of simply kicking SoB in the nuts and get back to it in 6.0 by making all tanks value crit/haste and just doing away with dodge/parry ratings.

I don't think they'll actually axe SoB. While it would certainly address the problem head-on, it would also aggravate a lot of players who've made gear decisions based on the paradigm. That doesn't mean they won't do it, but it's a much more important consideration to them than you'd think.

Regarding GC turning into an avoidance proc instead of a CS/HotR proc:

Klaudandus wrote:its effectiveness is proportional to the number of targets you're tanking and also affected by the lvl of your target, as a boss is less likely to be dodged/parried

Yes and no. A flat % chance on every avoid would work that way, but the concept of an internal cooldown isn't foreign to them either. "When you dodge or parry an attack, you have a 50% chance of (blah blah blah). Cannot occur more than once every Y seconds."

For example, set Y to ~6 seconds and AoE tanking won't be that different than single-target.

Problem is, I dont see how it would make Dodge/Parry better than Haste... in any case, I feel we would just switch to Accuracy/Mastery instead. Whatever bonus we get from avoidance is just icing on top, not something I see us look forward to.

Klaudandus wrote:Problem is, I dont see how it would make Dodge/Parry better than Haste... in any case, I feel we would just switch to Accuracy/Mastery instead. Whatever bonus we get from avoidance is just icing on top, not something I see us look forward to.

Of course, I could be very wrong

Not That There's Anything Wrong With That. Remember, they want to change the Haste/Avoidance equilibrum. Mastery can blow it out of the water by 300% for all they care.

When that day comes, seek all the light and wonder of this world, and fight.

That all depends on the proc rate and ICD, I think, but in any event I don't think their goal is to suddenly make dodge/parry better than everything else either. They said they want to narrow the gap, not reverse the gearing paradigm (even if doing so would be better in the long term).

I still think it might better to take dodge/parry away... just like other guys here have suggested. or at least consolidate it to a single stat (avoidance), so we dont get stuck with a piece of gear that is dodge/parry

Paladin - We knew haste would be attractive to Protection when we gave them Sanctity of Battle, whichonly Retribution had previously. That's why we gave them Sanctity of Battle. Even if you have atanking set with no haste, there are haste buffs in the game. We wanted all the tanks to benefitsomewhat from what were traditionally DPS stats, since part of the active mitigation design was tomake tanks care more about hitting things with sword (and claws). It only gets to be a problem, as Isaid previously, if dodge and parry (which are going to be on some gear) are perceived as pointless. (They aren't pointless, but that's really beside the point at this stage.) We aren't going to reitemizeevery plate piece in the game to remove dodge and parry. We also don't want to nerf haste forpaladins, because it is fun, and for the most part working as intended. We don't have a solution yetthat we're willing to share, but that's the intent. I state all this, because I feel like this already longthread has become a bit too dominated by this one topic in the past few pages.

I don't really agree with you on dodge/parry getting removed. I think it's probably good that there are distinct "tank plate" and "DPS plate" categories. The problem is that tank plate just isn't attractive to us right now. And it's partially because, despite their opinion to the contrary, dodge and parry really are pointless right now.

(Conjecture: for dodge/parry not to be pointless, they need to have some niche which they fill. Right now that niche is TDR, and basically nothing else. If we cared about TDR, they'd have a point. Until we do, though, they're filling a niche nobody cares about. They're about as relevant to us as strength mail would be to a shaman.)

In any event, I'd much rather see them remove hit/expertise, and if they do that and remove dodge/parry then we're going to have very few choices on gear to begin with.